Over the past decade, I’ve worked on a number of different projects aimed at improving communications using video conferencing and telepresence. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to be involved with key innovations at first Tandberg then Cisco that have had great impact on video collaboration:

Forging life-like experience with immersive telepresence

Extending the power of in-person all the way to the desktop

Enabling a consistent and intuitive user experience with a revolutionary touch-enabled device

Playing a pivotal role in driving video formats like H.264 and H.265 to standardization

With the spirit of innovation ingrained in both company’s DNA, the merger of Tandberg and Cisco’s video businesses in 2010 proved to be a major win for the industry and for the customer. Since then, we’ve focused our efforts on delivering next-generation video collaboration solutions that are enabling organizations to collaborate easily and efficiently, and allowing them to foster innovation within their own businesses.

Why is all of this so important? As time marches on, we see video becoming pervasive. Roberto De La Mora recently called video a business imperative, not a nice-to-have, and shared the five steps to success for deploying a business video strategy. The key to helping our customers prepare for the pervasive video future is through a flexible, scalable and interoperable approach. And others agree…

“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

– Winston Churchill

It is nearly impossible – even foolish – to look ahead without looking back. Glimpses into the past can give us inspiration for new innovations and even teach us what not to do. Behind every great technological innovation is a solid legacy product or solution that inspired it or played an integral part in its development. Behind the printing press was paper and block printing. Behind the telephone was the telegraph. And behind the Internet of Everything (IoE)? Ethernet.

Today – May 22 – marks the 40th anniversary of Ethernet. In 1973, technologist and 3Com founder Robert Metcalfe designed the Ethernet to allow computer devices to communicate with each other using radio-like signals over an antenna cable. Long used for reliable and efficient access to information, its implications on the networking world reach far past the local area network (LAN).

Over the course of 40 years, our quest for connecting the unconnected continues. Our connections have become increasingly complex since Metcalfe was tasked with connecting several Xerox computers to a single printer, and we need to understand the possibilities in both the number and value of our modern-day connections.

In a previous blog post, How the Internet of Everything Will Change the World…for the Better, I referenced Metcalfe’s law: the power of the network is greater than the sum of its parts. True. But the parts need to be recognized and optimized in order to maximize this power. The Internet of Everything is a large-scale metaphor for Metcalfe’s law. The combined connections of people, processes, data, and things don’t just amount to a list of things that are connected. The actionable insights that exist with the power of networked connectivity exponentially create the Internet of Everything.

Ethernet has helped further the progress that these connections – and the insights gleaned from them – will have on the Internet of Everything. So, today we celebrate not only the introduction of Ethernet, but also the technologies it made possible.

Cisco Partner Summit is all about executive networking, channel strategy discussions, technology updates, and business development. But it’s also an opportunity for partners to have some fun and maybe win some cool prizes while they’re at it.

This year, we’re bringing back our Favorite Quote Contest. We also have a new contest that uses the popular Vine video app, and calls for you to be as creative as possible in the span of just a few seconds. Keep reading to find out how to participate in this year’s contests and the exciting prizes we have lined up for the winners. Read More »

Over the past three years, Cisco has vaulted from the not only the leader in the networking industry, but they have become the number two blade vendor in the US and number three world-wide. This has caused some pause on the part of the top platform vendors in the industry.

Cisco is now making an impact on the application world as well. Last week at SAP Sapphire, the largest world-wide industry trade show for SAP in Orlando, Vishal Sikka, a member of the SAP Executive Board, specifically called out Cisco as a SAP HANA Server Platform Vendor in addition to their world-wide leadership role in the networking space. This was significant because this clearly puts Cisco in a different category as they gain market share in the SAP Application and SAP HANA space.

The result of this announcement was clearly visible at the Cisco booth at Sapphire. Cisco was an Onyx sponsor at Sapphire and demonstrated the many solutions that Cisco has with SAP. In the booth there was SAP HANA, SAP on Vblock, SAP on FlexPod, IT Process Automation, Afaria, and Precision Retail. The Cisco UCS Server Platform, Fabric Extender and Nexus are the basis for all these solutions with SAP. The result is Lower Total Cost of Ownership on a standardized x86 platform.

Just on the heels of our Packet Optical Networking Conference last week in San Jose we’re thrilled to announce another network operator has selected Cisco to make the transition to 100G. Last time was in the upper mountain state of Wyoming. This time it’s DukeNet Communications, a leading regional fiber network provider offering data and high-capacity bandwidth services to enterprise, data center, government and carrier customers. Primarily serving the southeastern United States, DukeNet controls an 8,000 route mile fiber-optic network now capable of delivering 100 Gbps services using Cisco’s nLight™ coherent Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. The Cisco ONS 15454-powered solution provides Read More »

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